Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

I took one more deep breath before opening up my mouth.

"With all due respect, but just like I might underestimate your side of the story, I do believe you severely underestimate the severity of my side."

I took a third breath and pushed my back against the tree I was resting against. Prompted forward, on my own two feet, I moved closer to the Madam, stopping only a few meters away from her.

The woman wasn\'t my goal, though.

"Look here," I suggested before stomping the heel of my shoe into the lush grass that replaced the trees within the clearing.

The absolute lack of a single flower, bush, or any other kind of plant meant that there were no tiny, natural structures below the grass, making it extremely prone to bending. And with no mesh of plants below to cushion and then spring it back up to shape, once stomped, the grass would remain pressed into the ground.

"Assuming this point is as big as the entire plain from the forest\'s edge to the crest of the rise behind the camp of those imperial mercenaries," I muttered as I calculated a few numbers in my mind before slowly counting up the steps as I walked away from the marked point in a relatively straight line.

\'I think… about… here?\'

Nearly reaching the edge of the open space, I suddenly turned around and faced Madam for a second, only to turn sideways towards her and then start roaming around the point I initially marked, drawing a huge circle in the grass.

A circle that nearly took up the entire area of the clearing.

"With the scale of what I\'m trying to show in mind, try to imagine a city sprawling as far as the circle I just made."

I took a short break to let Madam\'s creativity work its magic as she replaced the sight of the huge circle with something that fitted my request.

"A city with a population of nearly a third of a million souls. Sprawling between the open plains, a bay, including an entire island and a densely populated town\'s center…" I continued to describe what little I could remember about the historic and luckily the only, although double, instance of humans wielding this weapon of ultimate destruction.

"Okay, I imagined it all," Madam announced as she raised her eyes to me.

"Good," I commented shortly before walking back towards the middle of the circle… but stopping about three tenths of the way from its edge. "Now, imagine an intense flash of light," I slowly guided Madam\'s imagnation through the steps.

"Close your eyes and imagine light as intense as when you stare at the sun while at its lowest. A bright wave of light that washes over everything and blinds anyone unlucky enough to look even remotely in its direction. In fact, its still more than capable of blinding those who are turned away!"

I watched how Madam followed my suggestions and closed her eyes. I could even see her face tensed up as my explanation grew more and more detailed, thus allowing the woman to already foresee the end-goal from the tone of my voice.

"Now, open your eyes."

Madam slowly pried her eyelids open, only to nearly instantly find me with her eyes.

"Now, imagine a circle from the same starting point and reaching as far as where I am right now."

\'Wait, thirty percent of the total area of a circle wouldn\'t be anywhere close to a circle made with a radius that\'s one-third of the initial circle!\'

The moment I realized my mistake, my body nearly jumped to move so I could amend it…

Only for my conciouss will to stop it right in time.

\'Well, even if I\'m underplaying it a bit, the core message won\'t change."

"What about this other, smaller circle?" Madam asked, the sparks in her eyes showcasing she was starting to enjoy this small event.

"This smaller circle marks an area that no longer exists," I gave it to Madam straight. Everything, every human, every pet, every decoration, statue, building, road, lake…."

I shook my head.

"Like a drop of water thrown on a hot plate. A sizzle, and then there\'s nothing."

Madam\'s eyes widened a little while her facial muscles tensed up, freezing her expression.

"But that\'s the part that went away in the easiest, instant way," I picked up my story where I left it only to pick up the pace and move further four steps closer to the edge of the main circle… or, in simpler terms, the forest\'s clearing in general. "Within the circle as big as where I\'m standing right now, the moment the intense light washes over it, everything starts to burn."

I took a deep breath and closed my own eyes as I delved into my own imagination to construct this scene in my thoughts so that I could further immerse Fay\'s mom in the picture.

"At one instant you are walking down the street with your lover, enjoying a nice cup of tea while leaning out of your house window, working hard to prepare a meal for your family… And the next thing you know, you are on fire."

I shook my head as the picture before my own eyes started to get a bit too realistic and detailed for my own comfort.

"Your hair, your skin, your muscles, and your bones, they all start to burn if not melt from the overwhelming heat. And that\'s only the start of all the chains of disasters that are soon to follow!"

I raised my voice, indicating I was about to unleash a furious list of how the nuclear discharge was not only worse than any of the known natural disasters known to a man but actually a sum greater than the total of its parts!

But I had no plans of going into any further details. It wasn\'t my plan to scare Madam off with what the humans of my world managed to achieve with the brilliance of their minds.

I simply wanted to make her aware of the scale of the things I brought up before.

"All in all, thirty percent of the city vanished, sizzled out of existence. Seventy percent of what was left was pretty much within the lethal damage zone, leaving only occasional survivors. And while the remaining part of the city wasn\'t hit as hard due to the distance and the dispersing force of the strike…"

Madam\'s face twitched again, meaning she likely noticed something in my word that I couldn\'t be so sure I wanted to bring up.

I didn\'t know what she noticed, after all.

"Either way, even those who were lucky enough to survive didn\'t get away scot-free as quite a huge number of them suffered from a sickness caused by the poison spreading downwind from where the strike occurred. That and the entire city is now consumed by firestorms, hurricane-level winds, total collapse of infrastructure…"

I shook my head to get rid of the image that I myself crafted and put before my own eyes.

"What I\'ve just told you about was the fate of the first and second to the last city that humans of my world attacked with a certain weapon. A weapon that we have since begun mass-producing on a scale that soon allowed our kind to kill the entire world… just as a side-effect of fighting our wars."

I took a deep breath before spinning around to locate Fay and then promptly returning back to her side. Yet, rather than just grabbing her hand and settling for it, I pulled her into a hug… and then I just kept holding her.

Even though the fact of humanity nuking two cities to end the last stretch of the second and, thankfully, the last world war to date, I never really bothered with it all that much.

It existed at the edge of my conciousness as one of the thousands if not milions of facts I was required to be aware of just by the benefit of receiving the mandatory education.

It took me actually explaining and visualizing the effects those bombs brought with my own words for me to grow aware of the scale of destruction this weapon brought forth.

"The destruction of this city was caused by a prototype, an early and inferior product that our smart guys quickly topped over and over and over again…" For the uncountable time, I took a deep breath.

This time, however, as it was filled with the scent of Fay\'s skin that was just an inch away from my nose, this single breath brought my emotions down. As Fay\'s hands moved to my back before brushing up and down in a gentle caress, I could feel my mind and soul relaxing, leaving behind the agitated state brought by yours truly upon myself.

"By the time we finally came to our senses… we\'ve lived as a species for over a hundred years with the threat of a world-ending weapon hanging right over our heads."

With one more deep breath… or at this point, a sniff of Fay\'s scent, I gathered enough energy and will to lay it down straight.

"For over a hundred years my kind stood under an extremely real threat of the total annihilation that we were powerless to stop."

I took a deep breath before closing my arms over my chest and looking straight into Madam\'s eyes.

"So when you tell me that we didn\'t develop magic because there were no traumatic experiences for our kind to overcome…"

This time, I didn\'t take a deep, long breath. This time, I simply exhaled.

"If that\'s the case, then you will have to forgive me, Madam, but I have no other choice but to disagree."